“There’s a storm coming. The design world as we know it is
separating into the Polymaths and the Guilds. The Polymaths are the
broad-bandwidth thinkers who can see across cultural and technical
boundaries to find meaning in new future combinations…and the Guilds,
the specialist capabilities that can facilitate those ideas once they
have been envisioned.
The designer as we know it is already an endangered species. What is a
service and what is a product in the 21st Century is up for grabs.
Where does the Product end and the Metaproduct begin? How many
‘services’ as we know them today are going to have to migrate to ‘this
side of the glass’ and articulate themselves through physical metaphors
of their virtual self? Is NEST an object, a service or part of a
synthetic-aperture radar gathering big data for the highest bidder? I
guess it depends who you are and what your agenda is. The next five years may witness the most important shift in
consumption patterns we’ve seen for centuries. Buckle-up Dorothy, you’re
going to have to be on your toes. And if you’re going to continue to
call yourself a designer, better work out what that means….”